


listen carefully to the sound (of loneliness)

by inmadhouses



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Musician Niall, One Night Stands, Original Universe, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-05 17:15:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15175517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inmadhouses/pseuds/inmadhouses
Summary: A little something about connecting with people you never thought you'd connect with and that feeling you get when you think you're falling in love.





	1. Chapter 1

It’s pathetic, but for the first time in a long time, Malaika Thomas stirs awake to find herself incredibly aware of how alone she is.

The cold in the hotel room chills her to her bones. 

Opening her eyes in a flurry of panic, unsure of where she is, the memories come rushing back in a flash. But gently, like the moonlight against her skin the night before. Closing her eyes, she feels her heart join the erratic dance of dust in the gathering daylight just before her eyes.

In a state of disoriented consciousness, she remembers the way his body felt beneath her hands, surprisingly hard but smooth and defined beneath the thin fabric that was his shirt.

He was warm. So very warm.

She shifts in the typical hotel room too cold bed and eyes the temperature controller all the way across the room close to the exit. In her semi-conscious and semi-dressed state, she decides it’s too far and burrows further into the blankets, cocooning herself instead.

The chill persists and the dawn dwindles by slowly.

She lies there, half-sleeping, wondering how long she has until room service comes to tell her to get out because the occupants of the room has already checked out and she should bugger off too. But then she hears a certain splashing in the bathroom followed by a sudden thud echoing.

Her heart hammers dramatically as she jolts upright. Her pulse only fading back to normal when her brain recognises the stumbling form in the semi-darkness.

“Niall?”

He grumbles and swears, “Sorry. Took a piss. The fucking door—”

With a few more uncharacteristic expletives, he collapses onto the bed, his heavy weight causing the mattress to shift slightly.

Warmth floods through her.

Until she realises that the warmth will soon be replaced by a certain emptiness once more. She squints at the clock barely making out the time.

“What time do you have to go?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he mumbles, voice scratchy awakening all kinds of butterflies in her stomach, “Just think ‘bout it later.”

She opens her mouth to protest but her concerns melt away into his touch. Sinking back to their now shared cocoon, the pillows and sheets are still cold from the air conditioning but Niall’s lips are pressed against the back of her neck and his warm everything shifts closer. Malika allows herself a contented sigh.

The sun is rising over their sins from the night before and when the morning comes, she knows that the blossoms of what feels a lot like love will start to fall. But as he whispers a casual good morning, his groggy smile evident in his voice, her name on his lips like the perfect lyrics to the melody of daylight, she can’t find herself to care very much.

The sun continues its slow uphill climb just beyond their little nest, but despite the growing light, she falls back into asleep tangled in Niall Horan.

She huddles up against him and his arm snakes around her stomach, pulling her instinctively closer.

The warmth pulls her into a lull of contentedness.

She tells herself it’s probably the sun.

.

.

She could feel him watching her.

She keeps her eyes trained on the notebook in front of her, skimming through the questions she’s pretty much memorised by now, only registering about every other word or so as the people in the room pepper him with complete and utter insignificant hogwash. She had to hand it to him, he’s answering them gracefully, taking the questions from the journalists desperate for airtime and attention as it was a group session instead of a one-on-one. Those were exclusively reserved for the video interviews from radio stations and television so that the sponsors and label could have their branding loitering in the back.

Standard PR bullshit, really.

But he’s sitting comfortably on the couch right in front of her, absentmindedly picking at his hands and dancing circles around the repetitive questions he’s always hurled with.

“Have you spoken to your former bandmates recently?”

“Is One Direction ever get back together?”

“What do they think?”

“When are you dropping the album?”

A complete parade of the small minded gossip. The usual shallow going-easy-on-a-mark type questions. Malaika’s guilty of it too of course, playing it on the safe side, keeping within neutral territory; always only asking questions that don’t offend. But yet there she is, finding herself fighting the urge to roll her eyes five minutes into the session.

She starts scribbling nonsense into her notebook to calm herself down when she feels the telltale prickling at the back of her neck. Lifting her gaze, their eyes meet for a brief second before his darts away, suddenly entirely consumed with a rather simple question.

At first Malaika didn’t think of it much, a fluke. She’s being too self-conscious and sensitive. That’s all that there is. But half an hour into the group Q&A, after she’s gotten a few questions in herself, she catches another lingering gaze from one Niall Horan and it’s one too many times to chalk up to mere coincidence.

Another one of the journalists throw another insignificant vapid question into the mix and she notices a look on his face. Lips spread into a thin curve, cheeks pinched, eyes narrowed slightly and a small chuckle escaping his lip.

“Well with Slow Hands, I just wanted something with a bit more funk,” Niall smiles, skillfully dodging the initial question about who the song is about, playing up the happy-go-lucky Irish charm, “I think the first line we wrote was ‘We should take this back to my place.’ Then we decided to flip it around so it’s the girl who says it and everything just kind of just happened from there.”

He does a mini shrug at the end of it. The look still firmly plastered on his face.

Malaika thinks it odd, the look. He’s smiling but not; silently and stealthily but undeniably displeased.

She lets herself laugh at the thought and all eyes shift to her expectantly as she breaks the monotony of the rather formal camaraderie built around the session.

“I mean,” Malaika starts, “When you ask someone who a song is about what you’re really asking who he’s having sex with and he’s not going to come out and say ‘Oh, that song? It’s about Celine not Selena’.”

There’s a silence that follows and for some inexplicable reason she decides to fill it, ploughing on rather decisively and uncharacteristically, “Why pussyfoot around it for 45 minutes? Just ask if he’s single or if he’s ever been picked up by a girl in a bar.”

“That’s a no by the way,” Niall chimes in, looking directly at Malaika, with a chuckle he adds, “I’ve never been picked up at a bar and I’m also painfully single if you were wondering.”

He enunciates ‘painfully’ with an added punch and the air is palpable with some kind of unspoken tension. It almost feels like a challenge is being issued.

But then Sher, the skillful PR sweetheart that she is (and the sole reason why Malaika’s even at the interview) jumps in the middle of the derailed Q&A session to bring it back on track, “I think the point is, like with any album, there will be a lot of speculation about the content and source material. After all, that’s how some careers are made. Hello Taylor Swift, amairight.”

A gentle sort of tittering goes around the room as Sher shoots a look her way.

She can almost hear Sher’s screech, “Have you lost your fucking mind?” as her friend slash PR extraordinaire continues to expertly diffuse the tension in the room.

Malaika lets her attention go back to her notes, internally chastising herself. She’s never felt this need to boldly speak out of turn before and it’s unnerving. She can feel his eyes on her even when she’s not looking and it’s significantly messing with her core temperature and ability to maintain a rational thought.

She looks up at the interviewee once more and notices that he’s staring again, unabashedly now, his eyes dancing with something she can’t quite decipher.

He had walked in, this boy, in a white cotton shirt, sleeves rolled lackadaisically up to his elbows and everything just screamed casual with a hint of just rolled out of bed with his waywardly ruffled brunette hair, five o’clock shadow, and the slow flitting glances.

She was enthralled then, following his gait, staring long and hard without even noticing herself doing it, only barely snapping out of it when Sher introduces the seated media and grabs him a bottle of water in preparation of the group interview session.

He’s tall, Malaika thought. And what a jaw.

But now, she is transfixed by every slight upturning of his mouth. And there is just something about him that makes her hot in the head. Like she’s lived her whole life with fog around her eyes that’s finally cleared out and she’s seeing the clouds and the sun and the sky for the first time.

She then wonders about the other people who would spare him a glance when he walked in, if the pairs of eyes lingered on his face for as long as hers did.

(And if he’s ever stared back with the same intensity.)

The rest of the interview goes by pretty much uneventfully and Malaika for one, decides to skip the intimate little performance. She’s not quite sure if mental wellbeing can take him singing and staring at her at the same time.

It might be her inflated sense of self flaring up again, but she’d rather not take the risk.

Instead, she settled for an afternoon of leisurely law breaking. She’s not two puffs into the little rollie when her phone rings. She groans out loud upon glancing at the caller ID, certain that Sher is only calling to ream her out for skipping on the Flicker Session.

Or maybe to yell at her for being ‘hostile’ during the interview.

Who knows.

But the moment Malaika slides her finger across the screen to pick up the call, Sher’s voice is surprisingly not one of open displeasure.

“He wants to give you an exclusive,” she announces, and it’s really as warm as a greeting anyone she doesn’t work with or for gets.

“Huh?”

“Niall Horan wants to give you an exclusive, he’s moved a few things around in his schedule.”

In her confusion, or maybe the self-induced herbal haze, Malaika dug around in her purse to find her name cards, wondering if she gave the wrong one to the flurry of people she met just earlier. As a freelancer who worked with several titles, some more notorious than others, it would not be the first time she accidentally handed out the wrong name card.

“Hang on,” Malaika blinks several time at the cards through her fast drying eyes, “He wants to give an exclusive interview to who exactly?”

“Apparently he’s a fan of Cats and Commas,” Sher explains idly, almost as if the conversation is boring her.

“What?”

"Yeah, I had the same reaction.”

“Oh hah hah,” Malaika laughs dryly into her phone, knowing Sher’s disdain for her blog.

It’s not a huge site or anything, and she’s not by any means a key opinion leader that has thousands of social media likes, but her occupation allows her to meet up with quasi interesting people sometimes and she likes documenting them in her blog. Her blog style isn’t strictly what most publication would print, physically or digitally, so she hasn’t gotten any complaints. If anything, they like the fact that the features she’s hired to write gains double mileage.

Sher on the other hand had much higher hopes for her, “But seriously, if you’re done dabbling, I can hook you up with Warner or Sony and they would sign you in an instant. Words like ‘best voice in town’ has been thrown around ever since your brother invited you up onstage during his jam session.”

“I told you, I don’t want to spend my days writing mellow PG13 nothing serious love songs that never goes anywhere.”

“Then get into a band like your brother and write 18SX songs.”

“Sure. Or maybe I should just do what my sister did and find an American to marry for a green card.”

Sher snaps at that.

“For fucks sake, Ika. You know what,” she takes a an audible breather before continuing, “Different conversation for a different time. Niall Horan has specifically cleared out a couple of things tonight to have a chat with you. Just meet him at the hotel lobby at 6, I’ll text you the details.”

“Fine.”

“And if you can squeeze in an acoustic duet, record that shit on your phone and—”

“Okay, bye sweetie!” Malaika almost yells into her phone before hanging up and cutting her off mid sentence.

“What was that?” Bill asks, walking into the room, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the air.

“Apparently Niall Horan requested for a one-on-one with me,” she responds, unsure and still staring at the phone in her hands.

Channelling his inner girlfriend persona, which he does from time to time, Bill flamboyantly tilts his head and does some snazzy finger snaps, “Girl. Is you about to have your ass colonised by white people twice?”

Malaika rolls her eyes at her friend who lets her crash on his couch whenever she makes the trip across borders. “He’s heard of Cats and Commas and he wants to have a chat.”

“Oh, he wants a piece of that pussy alright.”

“You are so wasted,” she laughs, grabbing the joint from him and crushing it into the makeshift ashtray on his dining table.

Bill only reaches for another fresh rollie. “Like you’re not?”

“At least I’m a freelancer, you’re an employed copywriter who, by the way, what are you doing home at 4 o’clock in the afternoon?”

He shrugs before lighting up his second, “I knew you’d be down so I took the day off.”

“Liar.”

“Okay, Carrie’s just driving me fucking crazy.”

“Hey, you’re the one who decided to move in with your girlfriend of three months and then proceed to recommend her to intern at your place of work. Did you really think that seeing her all day at work and all day at home would be a good idea?”

“I know, I know. I’m an idiot and I’m bad at confrontation,” he groans.

“So you called in sick to avoid your girlfriend? Smooth.”

“I just needed a break.”

Malaika looks down at her phone to check the time. “Well, enjoy your break. I need to prep for this interview chat or whatever it is that’s going to happen in a little over an hour.”

She crosses the room get a sip of water and some biscuits from his kitchen counter but stops dead in her tracks when he surprises her with a rather ballsy question.

“Okay, no bullshit. Would you fuck him?”

Turning to stare at him, she decisively announces a plain no. Almost insulted that that is his only takeaway from the conversation.

“I mean, yeah, you’re not the kind of girl to get swept off her feet by an international artist who makes googly eyes at you,” he drawls on a little, the effects of the joint clearly kicking in, “But we’re not talking forever here. What if he just wants to bone? Would it be so bad if you lived a little?”

Malaika could have laughed. Could have. “And would it be so bad if everyone would shut the fuck up about how I live my life?”

“You really don’t think you play things a little too safe sometimes?”

“I am smoking up in broad daylight. There is the death penalty for possession here. There’s nothing safe about this situation,” she tuts in response.

“Wow. Jump back, wild child.”

She grabs and tosses the biscuit box at him.

Contrary to popular belief, time doesn’t slow down when you’re blazed. If anything, time moves quicker because your mind moves slower. Soon enough, six in the evening arrives and she’s walking into the lobby of the hotel.

Malaika spots him instantly, the same lazy hair, five o’clock shadow and casually comfortable attire at the coffee lounge where she probably didn’t even have enough Dollars for a sparkling water.

“Hi.” He waves, standing up and then promptly shoving that hand into his pants pocket.

She wants to laugh. Or hug him. She didn’t know it’s possible to find the worst wave in the history of waves to be so endearing but she keeps her game face on, noting the palpitations that came along with the realisation that he’s wearing glasses this time around.

The same glasses that made headlines the first time he was photographed out and about in. And the same glasses she’s noted that some girls in the fandom would kill for.

“Could that have been any more awkward?” Malaika chuckles as she stops short in front of him, again with the sudden loss of brain to mouth filter.

Niall openly emits something that sounds midway between a chuckle and a groan, as though hardly able to fault her for pointing it out.

“What?” She questions, sliding into a plushy lobby seat adjacent from him.

“Nothing. You’re just really frank. I don’t often get that,” he admits reluctantly, sounding almost bitterly resentful although it had seemed like he had admired that unexpected trait just hours before and thus partially having led them to this point.

“Ika, isn’t it?” He asks politely as he settles into his seat, “That seems like an unusual name for this side of the world.”

She pulls out her pen and notebook again, but pauses to make a comment on his curiosity. “You don’t really want to know.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t.“

The gleam in his eyes and glow in his smile hits her like a truck and she hesitantly explains that it’s a nickname, short for Malaika, which means angel.

"Apparently, my parents was on the verge of splitting up when they found out they were pregnant with me, so they thought I was the angel sent to keep this family together. Which is funny because when sister got really sick, I gave her a kidney and she left the country like two years ago. So much for keeping the family together,” she concludes the tale with a little shrug, a little too aware that she had prattled on.

Niall seemed not to have noticed.

“One good kidney and one good knee, don’t we make a pair?” His voice low, and his eyes meeting hers directly in earnest.

She instantly averts her gaze, biting her lip. Not even bothering to indulge him in any kind of a look. About a dozen retorts are brimming on her lips, that inexplicable invisible pull to be one of those people who just says things without a care flaring up again in his presence.

She reels herself in and asks instead if he’s on Tinder.

“What?” He laughs, probably wondering if he misheard.

“I’m just saying, hitting on journalists who are sent to interview you seems like an unsustainable dating model.”

“That’s not what—”

She interrupts him mid-sentence rather aggressively, “So you cleared your evening so you could talk to a freelance writer about her weird name?”

“Like I said to that PR manager, I like your blog. I thought we could talk.”

“So that’s all you want? To talk?”

“Do you want me to say I’m not interested? Would that be the right thing to say right now?”

“I just want to know why you seem to have this vested interest in me or my totally insignificant blog.”

Niall shrugs at that, answering the question simply and succinctly, “I like you.”

“You don’t know know me.”

“I’d like a chance to change that.”

It’s cliched and perhaps a little cheesy even. But the image he’s crafting in earnest is a tempting one. It’s one that she may have envisioned hours before when he first waltzed into the room. But her life is in such terrible shambles. She can’t even remember the last time she had drinks with her friends she’s been so busy and broke. He flies first class while she drove cost efficiently across borders making sure the mileage claims would benefit her at a measly 50 cents per kilometer.

They are a stark contrast from one another, there’s no denying it, and yet they seemed to move in the same orbit; poised for some sort of gravitational collision.

“It’s play on words,“ she blurts out.

To segue away to safer topics of conversation, Malaika begins explaining something he didn’t ask, "Cats and commas both have claws and paws. I thought it was really smart when I started blogging.”

“No, I get it. It’s funny. You speak and write really well.”

“Thanks, so do you,” she snaps, feeling the full weight of the ravine separating them despite his best efforts.

“I didn’t mean it like that, I mean—”

“What do you mean?” Malaika cuts him off before he reaches the end of his sentence.

“Well, I didn’t mean in a wanky white arsehole backhanded compliment kind of way, which in hindsight I assume is probably how you would have took it.”

“No, I’m sorry. I’m just. I’m really tired,” she admits reluctantly, feeling a phantom guilt for coming down so hard on this person who’s only crime is expressing interest in her.

Maybe she did have a tendency to play things a little too safe, she thinks.

“I drove six hours and a half for the interview earlier and I thought I’d have the weekend to relax hang with my friends, check out a rooftop bar or a couple speakeasies,” Malaika explains.

Niall slaps his hands on his thigh as though his mind is made up. “Let’s check them out then.”

“What?”

“Isn’t this what you do with Cats and Commas anyway? You talk to people, drink with them, and get the claws out and fill in the pauses?”

“Yeah, but to date not anyone with their own entourage,” Malaika turns to eye who she assumes is his manager or the bodyguard elected by the label not so inconspicuously just skulking about in the lobby.

She doesn’t even turn her head around when she feels Niall sidle up to the seat next to her. His voice drops several registers.

“We can make a run for it.”

Her eyes flicker over to the exit where the decent equator weather is hanging on by the barest of threads. The swell of bright purples and oranges mixing together in the sky, a kaleidoscope of a glorious sunset almost taunts her.

Her skin tingles. His sudden closeness brings her senses to overdrive and Malaika swears that she can smell a summer day on him.

She turns just in time to see a sudden grin that spreads across his face. She’s seen variations of that look before. Hell, she’s given that look before. Once or maybe twice in her life.

And she knows intimately that nothing good ever follows it.

“We are not making a run for it,” she declares.

But the former bottle blonde seems to have other plans, standing up briskly and grabbing her hand as he went. He pulls them to hide behind a rather imposing pillar in the middle of the lobby.

“What are you—” Malaika starts asking before the brunette pokes his head ever so slightly out from behind the pillar to sneak a glance. She imagines the manager/bodyguard’s confused face as he has lost track of his ‘charge’.

“I thought they said that the blondes are the ones who have more fun,” she whispers.

“They lied,” he says deadpan, “Why d’you think I grew out my hair?”

A little laugh bubbles up from her stomach that for some reason is all tied up in knots. He winks at her, doing nothing for the knots in her stomach and makes a move towards the exit.

Despite her trepidation, she goes with him. That something about him that is calling out to her becoming too much to deny.

They head for a rooftop bar first. The conversation, controlled and taut in the hotel lobby, now flowed a little more loosely. Probably from the drinks they sipped on. With the dying light of the sun and cityscape as a backdrop, she suddenly realises that she is, despite her initial protests, quite enjoying the company of one Niall Horan.

The thought should worry her, but it doesn’t.

Later, when they’ve had their dose of outdoor magic and discussed pretty much every era of music that comes to mind, words tumbling carelessly out, she suggests a change in venue. Her excuse being that staying too long in one place risks exposure on his part, but the truth is that the outdoor setting combined with alcohol and his easy charm has begun to heat up her skin like a sensual sunstroke, heady and tantalizing.

She wants to blame it on the weather, but she knows it’s something else and she’s not quite sure it’s a good thing.

It is foolish, she tells herself, to be upset over something that hasn’t even happened yet. It’s even more foolish, she thinks, when it involves something she’s not even entirely sure will come to pass.

Arriving at a little hole in the wall type bar next, Niall in all his boyish glory gleefully gravitates towards the pub sports.

It’s almost funny how his face is contorted in utmost concentration over an inconsequential game; eyes narrowed, tongue between his teeth, fingers firm as they test the dart back and forth.

He throws it, and she hears the gentle swoosh as it flies through the air.

It takes a split second and half a heartbeat. Then she hears the thud and sees him grinning triumphantly. Her gaze wanders toward the dartboard.

Bullseye.

“How do you even do that?”

“I’ve got good aim,” he says, winking at her.

“Are you trying to pick me up in a bar?”

“Do I look that strong?”

She laughs. Giddy and giggly on the gin and tonics and all the variety of recommended cocktails they’ve had thus far.

“You sound like the anti-joke chicken,” she teases.

“What I’m trying to do is impress you but apparently it’s not working.”

There’s a pause. Her head is telling her a change of location is overdue but she leans in close to his ear the words slip out coyly thanks to the all interesting mixes of courage accelerant she’s had, barely above a whisper.

“Try harder.”

The night whizzes by like that, with every cell in her body screaming for her to take a step back and him pushing against it like a kid pushing his nose up against the glass of the candy store display.

Like Icarus, Malaika is soaring closer and closer to certain tragedy. Magnetised by one Niall Horan, his words and stray thoughts filling her with something can’t quite put her finger on. She wonders momentarily if that’s how he’s used to living, hopping from one city to another making homes out of moments and never forming any real attachments. But then he leans in impossibly close and she swears she hears violins swelling and feels the world moving in slow motion like the shots in dramatic romantic films.

Any thoughts of flying too close to the sun melts away like Icarus and his wings.

All she wants is to cling to his skin like his cologne. She feels herself becoming unravelled, loosening and giving into the little fireworks that shoot in the dark corners of her body.

It takes a split second and half a heartbeat. His lips are on hers and she thinks she may just be taking a real risk for the first time in her life.

They’re all greedy kisses and not so covert touches after that, barely making it out of the bar as two separate entities; mouths devouring, lips pushing and teeth biting.

He swallows her moan as he pushes her up against a grimy back alley wall next to a dumpster and she swallows his surprise when she pulls him all the more closer. It settles somewhere low in her belly, fluttering something akin to butterflies and sets a charge of electricity down her back.

But a familiar bass line and thumping catches her attention and she pulls away. Breathless.

There’s a look on his face when she does.

A yellow light spilling from the street light behind him, swimming and swirling through his hair, soft and warm aglow around the outline of his face. But then a familiar shriek cuts through the air, slightly muffled since the music is playing on the inside and they were outside.

Niall chuckles as he too realises why she had pulled away.

‘We should take this back to my place’  
That’s what she said right to my face

“‘Cause I want you bad,” he begins singing along, “Yeah I want you, baby.”

Niall takes a step back and takes her hands with him.

Before she knows it they are a dancing swirling mess with a surprising accompanying live performance, their shadows pulling apart and rejoining as one against the tar lined roads under the soft glow of the street lights.

It makes her dizzy and she’s laughing openly. A crazy thought passes through her mind; she hates to admits it, but the boy does have good aim.

.

.

He wakes up to a cold bed alone and an unspoken tension hangs on by a thread in the air.

Niall’s first thoughts are that she’s left, leaving a silent hum and a dose of painful infinity wondering what it was that went wrong in her wake.

He should have known though. Should have known that you can never catch a fleeting love. That it falls on your front door like a bird with a broken wing and it when it heals, it flies off to where it should be.

You try not to see it coming, but the sting still hurts all the same.

He looks to the window for a breather his mind demands and hears some sort of movement. A telltale sound perhaps. Throwing a t’shirt and pants on, he ignores the mess of the sheets he’s leaving behind and wanders across the room in some sort of hopeful compulsion.

And then he sees her; clad the shirt he’d been wearing when they met earlier, slightly swaying on the balcony just behind the glass pane.

It’s not hard to get lost in the blurry canvas of a girl and a skyline. He makes out her shape from behind, her dark hair, still slightly damp and heavy from when they got caught in the rain bending to the shape of the breeze. Her wrists are resting on the balcony railing, two fingers on the right delicately occupied with a stick of cigarette. But it’s her voice that demands his full attention.

The words she’s singing, barely make it through the shut sliding doors, but her expression of song speaks to something in him he tucked away deep inside;

I was just  
I was just  
I was just sitting here thinking  
Of your kiss and your warm embrace

Niall stares. He can’t help it. It comes easily, as natural as breathing. His glimpse just stretches on undisturbed and unashamed, as if to make up for the ruckus that is his heartbeat. 

She takes a drag from the cigarette and turns around, her eyes meeting his from behind the glass and suddenly his heart is in his throat.

He lets go of a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and moves to join her outside.

“So out the eighty seven topics of conversation we’ve had,” he starts, sliding the doors open and stepping out to the sultry night air, “Half of which involved music, and two involving how you and your brother, who is in a local band, melting cheese, you somehow don’t once mention that you sing?”

She smiles wryly. “Everyone sings, some just better than others.”

“Well, that sounds a lot more like some than others.”

Malaika turns again to face the city lights below them, avoiding the topic. Deflecting. Always always deflecting.

He lets his eyes memorise the lines of her face as she lifts the cigarette to her lips, the tips burning bright. He can’t stop staring. And he’s pretty sure she’s noticed by now, if not during their initial meeting with about a dozen other people who barely held a fraction of his attention.

His gaze normally wanders during group interviews. He hates it. The sessions feel like an attack, an ambush of sorts; too many of them and only one of him.

But then he sees her and he doesn’t even have time to question it; it happened too fast. He looks up and it took all of one second to register it. Her eyes are dark and welcoming and her smile feels warm, bright like the sun back at home; quiet, gentle, and radiant, without any of that sunstroke worthy burn.

Niall stares. His glimpse just halts on her. As does all his other senses.

Question after question come his way. He doesn’t notice anyone else in the room but answers them best he can in his distracted state. His only thought is that life doesn’t quite feel real when he looks at her. This girl, who right at this moment, feels like too right to be a random happenstance in his stagnant life.

“I submitted a demo once,” she declares suddenly, her voice pulling him back to the present, “To a local indie label back at home.”

“Yeah?”

Niall is sure he’s smiling stupidly for no reason to an outsider. But she’s beautiful. And it hits him with an especially staggering force. He wants to kiss her. He wants to so much. But he’s not sure quite where they stand. Even after their recent bedroom antics.

So he just doesn’t.

“I never heard back,” she shrugs, lifting the cigarette to her lips once more.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“So did I, until I found out that the guy I handed the demo to never passed it on.”

Another thin line of smoke escapes from her lips.

“He called it embarrassing. Said that my words were depressing and self deprecating and I needed to take it more seriously than recording in a bedroom on a cassette.”

He’s incredulous at the thought of that. “You recorded it on a cassette?”

She flicks the burned out cigarette butt his way. “Shut up.”

Chuckling good humouredly, he asks for her to sing him something.

“What?”

“Sing me something you wrote,” Niall repeats the request.

She refuses. Clamping up and shaking her head.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s depressing and self deprecating,” she says, like the most obvious thing in the world.

He chuckles at that. “You know I get the feeling that you’ve been inside your head for far too long.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Malaika raises her eyebrow.

Niall Horan had spent a grand total of maybe seven hours with the girl.

And of the seven hours, she had been the one doing the most poking and prodding, steering the conversation or deflecting with a joke. It had been nerve wracking at first, like two seven year olds who had just admitted that they liked each other on the playground, but after her initial trepidation, the conversation began to come a lot more naturally.

“You never tried to send out another demo?” He asks.

"What’s the point?”

He takes a step closer to her, resting his wrists on the railing too and his gaze on the multitude of life just passing by beneath them. “You talk like you’re just going to stay here for the next few decades and do what you’ve been doing like it’s a given.”

“I don’t know,” Malaika sighs, a not quite sadness but not quite hopeless futily evident in her voice, “I see my brother and his band and how they struggle to get paid for a show and how they’re trying to scrounge up money for proper studio time to make their album and I think if I want to make a record the way I want to make it, I’ll need money. I’ll need marketing, publicity, equipment, and even then, who’s going to listen it? You can’t just make a record that only you want to hear.”

“You can’t make records for anyone else,” Niall muses out loud before tearing his gaze from the cover of night spread out beyond them.

They must look strange, standing with what little space between them, together but apart.

“So you’re perfectly fine making a record that nobody listens to as long as it’s a record that you want to make?”

“I write songs because I want people to construe the way it relates to their lives, but none of it means anything if it’s not a song that relates to my life,” he says, matter of factly, because it’s the only truth he knows.

She hums contemplatively to that.

“Hmm?” Niall asks.

Malaika simply shrugs with a small smile tugging at her lips. “Just ‘Hmm.’”

She doesn’t say anything more than that, but Niall sees it on her face. And there’s so much more he wants to know. He wants to know everything. Everyone has their story. Not everyone shares it as openly as others, but he wonders if she would share hers if he finds the courage to ask. As far as he could tell, she has the heart of the poet and the brain of mathematician. The gears always moving, calculating probabilities and worrying about consequences. Always trying to keep one step ahead by being one step behind.

What had happened to make her this way, he wonders.

“What about you then?”

She blinks several times before shooting him a look. “What about me?”

“What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Malaika groans throwing her head back, “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, I don’t want to think about it.”

“You have to want something? Everybody wants something.”

The words that follow are sharp but playful, like a cat playing with a kitten with sheathed claws. “Well. Not all us can audition for a singing contest when we’re sixteen and go on to be a old man multimillionaire at twenty. Some of us have to work towards becoming old and boring.”

“How am I old and boring?” Niall asks, aghast, the thick cool night air doing nothing for a wave of feelings sweeping through him.

“You play golf for fun, you Snapchat about dental appointments, you have a bum knee, and you know nothing about seasoning poultry,” she counts them on her fingers, “Sounds pretty curmudgeonly to me.”

“I take offense in that.”

“You should.”

It’s a strange kind of sensation to feel this… comfortable with someone he barely knew. But being around her is the floaty sensation after one too many cocktails. Like the snugness of a sweaters with long sleeves.

The continue to stare out into the night. Not really looking at anything, head swimming with thoughts. Until he breaks the silence.

“You still haven’t answered the question by the way.”

“Aren’t you the persistent one?” She turns around, her back leaning against the railing.

“Got you here, didn’t I?”

Malaika pauses, as though deep in thought, trying to weigh the situation. Probably wondering if she can change the subject once more.

But then she concedes.

“Honestly, I think I would take any form of controlled happiness.”

He’s sure the confusion is evident on his face. But Malaika spares him the follow up question.

“Euphoria’s overrated. All these people I meet and talk to and write about on Cats and Commas, they’re all chasing after something and when I look them, I’m exhausted. When you want something, you have to lose, you know? I just want to be.”

Niall is floored. He is looking at this blazing, beautiful creature as she speaks and beyond her philosophical poetics about what life sums up to and the cosmic confessions they’ve been spilling all night, he feels like something has crawled inside of him and planted a seed in his deepest depths.

And he can’t shake it no matter how hard he tries. (Boy, has he tried.)

He’s dizzy just looking at her. Here’s a girl who could probably be anything she wanted, yet chooses not to. Her voice is definitive and clear compared to the rest of his world, driven by chaos and madness, stemming from uncertainty and fear. And there she is, just wanting to exist in her small dose of controlled happiness. Accepting that some lives can be mundane and normal and that it’s still okay as long as you’re okay with it.

He’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone quite so quietly extraordinary in her own way. Maybe he hasn’t.

He decides she needs to know it.

“You’re really something else, you know that?”

She raises a brow. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“I’m not doing better with the impressing you thing, am I?”

“Not really. No,” Malaika shakes her head teasingly.

“You think room service and champagne ought to do the trick?”

“Is that how you normally impress the pants off of a girl?”

“I would say yes but I believe your pants are already off,” Niall smirks, turning his body so that he’s facing her, elated that they’ve settled back into banter, casual conversation and a cajoled connection.

“Proud of yourself, aren’t you?”

“Considering that I literally never do this, I am quite, yeah.”

“Well then, just to warn you, after the sex, the one not staying at the hotel normally hightails out of there fairly quickly.”

“Are you sure that’s how it goes?” He asks, trying to keep the banter going.

She shrugs. “I don’t make the rules.”

In a state of sudden and unreasonable panic, he says the first thing that he could think of. Coyness and teasing and being smooth and all that horseshit be damned.

“What if I don’t want you to?”

She lets out a breath, eyes dropping to the ground finding her own bare feet very interesting.

It’s pathetic. He knows it’s pathetic. But Louis always did say that fell too fast and too hard. It was true when he was a kid jumping around on stage and it’s still true now. He falls fast and Louis is right and he thinks it’s just happened or is happening but he just really wants her to stay.

The silence that follows is deafening despite the tinkle of city night soundtracking the moment.

She’s avoiding his eyes. And when does she look up, it’s to do this thing that she’s consistently done since the moment they sat down in the lobby.

“Does it ever feel surreal?”

“What does?”

“This life you have; five-star hotels, best view in town, never having to scan the price list, knowing you have the ability to just ask a girl to stay and she’ll say yes.”

“Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“I don’t know… Treading. Tiptoeing. Around me. Being all careful and deflective.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re always… reading me. And if I say something you don’t expect, you clamp right up.”

He’s spilling honesty from every pore, and it feels like he’s on the Titanic alone, sinking fast into oblivion. He just wants to listen to her forever, revel in her shining eyes and smile that could light up a dark room.

“It’s called a defense mechanism,” Malaika admits, voice small, turning her body to face him too.

“I had no idea we were under attack.”

“We’re not, but I am,” she looks straight at him, “This isn’t what I do; I’m not the person who calls out other reporters mid interview, or goes bar hopping with international artists on whim.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. I—”

“I like you,” he blurts out, his voice is suddenly a lot louder and full of confidence although he has no right to be. “I like like you. A lot. And I don’t do this either and it’s driving me absolutely mental because I can’t figure it out. There’s just something about this.”

Malaika frowns at him, “If you’re only saying that so that I’d—”

“No, no, I—I’m not just saying it. I really do… I mean look at you—”

He gathers up just enough courage to brush a stray lock of hair of her face.

“I’m just saying I like you. I know you agreed to just talk but after what just happened last night, tonight? You can’t say you don’t feel it too. And I know I’m being ridiculous, that I’ll probably get over it but I don’t want to. I just. I just need you know that. And now you know. That’s me. That’s all my cards on the table.”

He lets his words hang in the air and drift off into the silence, exhaling a breath he’s been secretly holding as she stays inconspicuously quiet.

In the silence, Niall realises that he’d actually wished that she had interrupted him at some point. He didn’t even realise it until the disappointment sunk in, right beyond the finish line of his unplanned word vomit.

He had never been one to overly consider his future relationships. Hell, he’s not even sure what he’s asking of her. All he knows is that he wants to have her by his side through every big moment. And maybe even the small ones. And if that wasn’t possible, he would settle for a few more hours. Because sometime between meeting her up until the two of them standing on that balcony, Niall began to have these dreams.

She’s everywhere in his head. The thought of her seeps all the way to the ends of his fingers and he itches to just be able to hold her.

If she’d only say something. Anything.

“You leave tomorrow,” Malaika starts saying flatly, more of statement than anything.

His heart drops. “I know.”

“You go back to your Flicker Sessions and promo interviews and screaming girls.”

“I know,” he repeats, voice strained, “I just. I don’t want to think about all that now.”

His heart seems desperate to breakaway of its cage, and his hands a disgusting clammy mess. Partially thanks to the humidity and partially thanks to his inability to stretch the night out further.

There is something caught in his throat. He wants stand here with her for as long as human legs are psychically able to take weight.

And then, she kind of shrugs an ‘okay’ and he doesn’t know what his life is anymore.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

He clamours out a final breathless ‘okay’ and they just… stay. They call for room service and drink until they can’t see straight. Her head is lolling as she recounts the story of how she got the scar on her elbow, when she and her brother jumped this guy who basically sexually assaulted their older sister in a club.

His wants to hold her hand so bad, wants to trace and inquire about every scar and every bump there is, the champagne they ordered draining into his blood and every inch of his veins.

Malaika is talking about her family in a voice that is so light and full of joy, her eyes shining and her smile practically lighting up the sky above them, that he realises it may not be the alcohol.

It’s her, she is in his veins; flowing through every inch of him.

And he realises, for the first time, that when tomorrow comes, he would would miss her as if someone had ripped a hole straight through his chest.

.

.

Daybreak is warm and bright, the sun beating into the room and leeching the sleep out of them.

They are are sprawled mass of bodies cuddled together under the morning sun; a tangled mess of limbs, lying together in the comforts of the plush white sheets and blankets. Niall has been watching the girl in his arms, what feels to him like the entire cosmic galaxy, and there’s just something particularly satisfying about it. It’s a rush of blood to the head, hairs upstanding on the back of the neck. He feels… more alive than he’s ever been.

The blackjack dealer’s words from the night before ringing in his ears still, “You must really love her.”

He looks up then, eyes wide with the surprise as he shifts his gaze to her. Malaika’s not too far from the table, chatting to a group of men in suits, bouncers probably, the place practically empty on account on the fact that it’s four am in the morning and the only people in the place are the vice addicts who can’t tell the days from the nights anymore.

She’s laughing and luminous, and he can see their veneer of seriousness cracking at the hands of this radiant specimen.

“I can see it in the way you look at her,” the lady continues saying as she shuffles the cards, “Like the sun rises and sets in her eyes. It’s sweet.”

He hears his heartbeat mix with her laughter in his ears and he wants to say something profound and enlightening but he’s tipsy still from all the champagne they’ve had in his room and all he can find himself to say is a deflated ‘yeah’.

He thinks, later. He’ll ask her if she feels it too, later. He’ll ask if the pointy, strange, uncomfortable thing of spending a night with a complete stranger has her too feeling things she shouldn’t be.

Except later has arrived sooner than he had hoped. And now he is staring down the barrel of time hoping to impede the flight of earth’s rotation.

He’s been staring for hours now. Not in an absurdly creepy way. Just a little bit creepy. He’s okay with being a little bit creepy. Entire songs are written about being the right amount of creepy.

She shifts in his arms and starts to wake, the heat of the sun and closeness becoming too much for her probably, and he mentally prepares himself for the feeling of lightheadedness that he’s become accustomed to with her eyes. They are soon a ball of sweet whispers and trickles of familiarity and it feels so good he almost forgets he has to leave.

They are kissing again, and he’s winded. He doesn’t care that he’s been kissing her lips all night, just that he may never do it again. That he might have a few drinks before the flight and then a few more on the flight. That he’ll very likely pass out thinking about her, and wake up thinking of her again. That he might see something mid performance that reminds him of her and totally forget the lines he’s meant to sing.

All he can think about is that he might have to carry the memories of this angel and this day only in his heart until the day he dies.

He breathes against her and pulls back when a faint murmur escapes his lips. The words so quiet that for a moment he doesn’t even realise that they’ve materialised out loud at all.

It’s all adrenaline and hearts thumping to his throat but he doesn’t regret it for a second.

He says it again for good measure.

“Come with me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of an outtake than anything, the originally planned ending that I wrote that was more final. Because she doesn’t go with him. She’s lived too long stuck in this place between wanting to run away from her life like her older sister and to live it to the utmost like her older brother. But that’s not to say she won’t stay with him forever. Like all the people you fall in love with, they stay with you. For always. One that people won’t see or know about. One that they might hear in the small intake of breath in the middle of a song maybe. One that he has tucked away in his heart until someone else comes along and he’ll push it even further back to make room for that someone new. 
> 
> And their encounter changes her too. In so many ways. She becomes an avalanche of a person, and he is the lone cause. She’ll decide to live her life in a big way one fine day and write a book. It’ll do moderately well. She’ll move to LA on the insistence of her older sister and she’ll see him everywhere, his face on the billboards and his song on the airwaves. And then it’ll hit her. Or graze against her, more like. Something subtle. Maybe a breeze will carry him. His scent. The smell of summer and endless possibilities. And then as swiftly as it comes, it leaves. Like dust in the morning light as your eyes adjusts to the rays of the newborn sun. She’ll realise that they barely had time at all. They barely had any time over the course of that one night to seek its touch, inhale it fully, revel in the precious wave of something that was so profound.

“Come with me.”

The words hang between them like a fine mist in the morning, barely holding on by a thread and dissolving into sunlight and warmth.

The laughter in her eyes present just seconds ago melts away.

“And do what?” She asks with a chuckle escaping her lips, the laughter not quite reaching her eyes.

“Anything you want. Write. Sing. Record. Take pictures. Anything. Everything.”

Malaika leans back onto the pillows, rolling away from his arms and the space suddenly between them suddenly too much for him to bare.

“I have a job here,” she whispers, gently, almost as if reminding herself.

“I know.”

“Multiple jobs, actually, to pay for my students loans, and the car loan, and rent, because my brother’s in a band and my sister’s in the States with her pompous piece of shit of a husband—” Malaika starts to ramble on, voice growing louder as she goes.

“I have a life here.” She exclaims, turning her head to look him straight in the eye, breathless.

“And I’m saying you can be in love.”

“Niall—”

“I love you.”

His gaze is steady, but his voice cracks and it hurts. It hurts that becoming Niall and Mali is not effortless for her. In his head, it should have been as effortless as blinking. Instinctual. You feel it if you stop and pay attention to your lids and your muscles. You feel your eyes protest and water and your vision blur when you try to stop it.

But then, a simple momentary lapse of willpower and your body does it for you anyway.

There is something he can’t read in her eyes; the hazel eyes that revealed so much but also held so much back would be ingrained in his memory forever.

The words that come next winds him. She says them carefully, slowly, like a prayer in hopes that she doesn’t break as she says them.

“I’m not sure if I can.”

She leaves the sentence unfinished, but Niall hears the inflection in her voice and just knows.

The pain is gentle and familiar. Like the gentle waft of cigarettes and daydreams he had inhaled all night, feeling like his lung was about to burst with the scent that had seeped deep into his bones. Like the taste of her lips and her breath and her voice grafting dreams he never knew he had onto the back of his fingertips.

“I’m not sure if want to,” she corrects her previous statement, digging the hypothetical knife deeper into his ribs, breaking the silence and his reverie.

“I mean we were two people who met, and sort of became friends, and then we weren’t, and then.. fuck.”

“Are you using that as an exclamation here or a verb?”

“Both?” She exhales, uncertainty clear in her eyes. 

Malaika laughs, softly edged, a sound he wants to commit to memory forever. Like an ink stain on a favourite piece of clothing that you hide. Something you can’t erase so you just live with. 

“You’re different from what I expected,” she admits. 

“Expected?”

“You know, the way everyone else paints you,” she shrugs, “I don’t know. I’m really not that good with words.”

And right then Niall decided that maybe they didn’t need words.

The silence returns and their lips inherently find one another in the closeness. Their tongues dance together and their teeth bump against available expanses of skin, hungry for more. Knowing that however more they attempt to steal in the cover of daybreak, that it’s never going to be enough.

He pushing her into the mattress and Niall doesn’t know what he’s doing, really, but she seems to be clinging to him like her life too depended on it, so he doesn’t stop.

They kiss hungrily as her fingers roam restlessly over his scalp, tugging at his hair.

The sink and shift together, moaning contently to the intimacy of skin on skin contact, their heatbeat and movements synchronised. Malaika arches her back, and gasps his name over and over, intermittent between a series of curse words. 

It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard and her careful caresses send glorious tremors through his body.

Their movements become quicker, more frantic, in the heat of knowing what will soon be over. 

They both last no time at all. 

“Fuck,” he groans, voice hoarse, face buried in her neck and breathing her in.


End file.
